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Monday, 11 July 2011

A labour of love

Let's just gloss over how long I've neglected this poor old blog, shall we? No dramatic reason for it; I've just been busy and got out of the habit and that makes me rather sad as I've very much enjoyed blogging in the past. I make no promises but I think I need to up my posting rate a little bit ...

The four school houses - my two are in Kestrels!

Anyway, one of the projects that has taken a lot of my time recently was the designing and making of a wall hanging for the village school my children attend and where I work part time. This is a tiny friendly place with just over 100 pupils in four classes, and this week marks the 150th anniversary of the school's opening. On Saturday there was a big tea party with singing and cake, and a flypast by a Spitfire piloted by one of the dads from the school which made everyone feel terribly emotional.

As part of it our new wall hanging was officially unveiled; I've been working with one of the other mums on the design and making of this for about half a term, and it's involved going into school and getting the children fully involved in making parts of it, then lots of cutting out and industrial quantities of bondaweb, culminating in a frenzied series of late night sewing sessions. My poor sewing machine doesn't know what hit it.

Panels made from the children's drawings - Class 1 made their sandpit, Class 2 drew portraits of themselves in the school pool, Class 3 drew the wildlife pond and Class 4 made pictures of themselves playing on the village green

This thing is BIG - 2 metres each way and I realised my house is not large enough to lay it out anywhere for taking pictures. It's also far too heavy to hang on my washing line so I apologise for these pictures - it really isn't that wonky in real life!

Class 4 each cross stitched a letter for the centre panel

Everyone seemed to like it - and most importantly the children and teachers at the school are thrilled with how it turned out. And so am I. I'm not sure it will last 150 years but hopefully a good few ...

It is amazing and how wonderful for all the school to be involved, pupils will go back in years to come and point out their bit.My old school closed down on Friday after 126 years, I was there from 4 - 17 and loved it.

What a wonderful way to celebrate your school's special day and I love the fact that all the children were involved in it's design! I should think it will hang in pride of place for many years to come :o)

Oh Val what a wonderful project to be involved with! It's really super and it's no surprise that everyone is thrilled with it. I bet your two girls are very, very proud that their mum is such a creative lady and a whizz on the sewing machine!

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